فصل 41

41.

In Which Several Paths Converge

Luna scrambled up the steep slope toward the ridgeline. The upper edge of the moon had just begun to emerge over the lip of the horizon. She could feel a buzzing inside her, like a gear spring wound too tight and whizzing out of control. She felt herself surging, and that surge erupting wildly from her extremities. She tripped and her hands fell hard on the pebbly ground. And the pebbles began to jostle and scuttle and crawl away like bugs. Or no. They were bugs—antennae and hairy legs and iridescent wings. Or they became water. Or ice. The moon pushed higher over the horizon.

Her grandmother had taught Luna, when she was a little girl with scabby knees and matted hair, how a caterpillar lives, growing big and fat and sweet-­tempered, until it forms a chrysalis. And inside the chrysalis, it changes. Its body unmakes. Every portion of itself unravels, unwinds, undoes, and re-­forms into something else.

“What does it feel like?” Luna had asked.

“It feels like magic,” her grandmother had said very slowly, her eyes narrowing.

And then Luna had gone blank. Now, in her memory, she could see that blankness—how the word magic flew away, like a bird. Indeed she could see it flying—each sound, each letter, skittering out of her ears and fluttering away. But now it came flying back. Her grandmother had tried to explain the magic to her, once upon a time. Maybe more than once. But then perhaps she had simply grown accustomed to Luna’s not-­knowing. And now, Luna felt as though she was in a storm of memories, jumbling around inside her skull.

The caterpillar goes into the chrysalis, her grandmother had said. And then it changes. Its skin changes and its eyes change and its mouth changes. Its feet vanish. Every bit of itself—even its knowledge of itself—turns to mush.

“Mush?” Luna had asked, wide-­eyed.

“Well,” her grandmother had reassured her. “Perhaps not mush. Stuff. The stuff of stars. The stuff of light. The stuff of a planet before it is a planet. The stuff of a baby before it is born. The stuff of a seed before it is a sycamore. Everything you see is in the process of making or unmaking or dying or living. Everything is in a state of change.”

And now, as Luna ran up the ridge, she was changing. She could feel it. Her bones and her skin and her eyes and her spirit. The machine of her body—every gear, every spring, every well-­honed lever—had altered, rearranged, and clicked into place. A different place. And she was new.

There was a man at the top of the ridge. Luna couldn’t see him, but she could feel him with her bones. She could feel her grandmother nearby. Or at least she was fairly certain it was her grandmother. She could see the grandmother-­shaped impression on her own soul, but when she tried to get a sense of where her grandmother was now, it was blurred somehow.

“It’s the Witch,” she heard the man say. Luna felt her heart seize. She ran even faster, though the ridge was steep and the way was long. With each stride she increased her speed.

Grandmama, her heart cried out.

Go away. She did not hear this with her ears. She heard it in her bones.

Turn around.

What are you doing here, you foolish girl?

She was imagining it. Of course she was. And yet. Why did it seem as though the voice came from the grandmother-­shaped impression in her spirit? And why did it sound just like Xan?

“Don’t worry, my friend,” Luna heard the man say. “I will make it very quick. The Witch will come. And I will slit her throat.”

“GRANDMAMA!” Luna cried. “LOOK OUT.”

And she heard a sound. Like the cry of a swallow. Ringing through the night.

“I would suggest that we move more quickly, my friend,” Glerk said, holding Fyrian by the wing and dragging him forward.

“I feel sick, Glerk,” Fyrian said, falling to his knees. If he had fallen that hard earlier in the day, surely he would have cut himself. But his knees—indeed his legs and his feet and the whole of his back, and even his front paws—were now covered with a thick, leathery skin on which bright, hard scales were beginning to form.

“We do not have time for you to be sick,” Glerk said, looking back. Fyrian was now as big as he was, and growing by the moment. And it was true. He was looking a bit green about the face. But maybe that was his normal color. It was impossible to say.

It was, Glerk felt, a most inconvenient time to choose to grow. But he was being unfair.

“Excuse me,” Fyrian said. And he heaved himself over to a low shrub and vomited profusely. “Oh dear. I seem to have lit some things on fire.”

Glerk shook his head. “If you can stamp it out, do so. But if you are right about the volcano, it won’t much matter what is on fire and what is not.”

Fyrian shook his head and shook his wings. He tried flapping them a few times, but he still was not strong enough to lift off. He sniffed, a stricken look pressed onto his face. “I still can’t fly.”

“I think it is safe to say that is a temporary condition,” Glerk said.

“How do you know?” Fyrian said. He did his best to hide the sob lurking in his voice. He did not hide it very well.

Glerk regarded his friend. The growing had slowed, but it had not stopped. At least now Fyrian seemed to be growing more evenly.

“I don’t know. I can only hope for the best.” Glerk curled his great, wide jaws into a grin. “And you, dear Fyrian, are one of the best I know. Come. To the top of the ridge! Let us hurry!”

And they rushed through the undergrowth and scrambled up the rocks.

The madwoman had never felt so good in her life. The sun was down. The moon was just starting to rise. And she was speeding through the forest. She did not like the look of the ground—too many pitfalls and boiling pots and steamy depths that might cook her alive. Instead, in the boots she ran from branch to branch as easily as a squirrel.

The Head Sister was following her. She could feel the stretch and curl of the Sister’s muscles. She could feel the ripple of speed and the flash of color as she loped through the forest.

She paused for a moment on the thick branch of a tree that she could not identify. The bark was deeply furrowed, and she wondered if it ran like rivers when it rained. She peered into the gathering dark. She allowed her vision to go wide, to hook over hills and ravines and ridges, to creep over the curve of the world.

There! A flash of blue, with a shimmer of silver.

There! A glow of licheny green.

There! The young man she had hurt.

There! Some kind of monster and his pet.

The mountain rumbled. Each time it did so it was louder, more insistent. The mountain had swallowed power, and the power wanted out.

“I need my birds,” the madwoman said, turning her face to the sky. She leaped forward and clung to a new branch. And another. And another. And another.

“I NEED MY BIRDS!” she called again, running from branch to branch as easily as if she was running a footrace across a grassy field. But so much faster than that.

She could feel the magic of the boots lighting up her bones. The growing moonlight seemed to increase it.

“I need my daughter,” she whispered as she ran even faster, her eye fixed on the shimmer of blue.

And behind her, another whisper gathered—the beating of paper wings.

The crow crawled out of the girl’s hood. He arranged his fine feet on her shoulders and then snapped his shiny wings out, launching himself into the air.

“Caw,” the crow called. “Luna,” his voice rang out.

“Caw,” again. “Luna.”

“Caw, caw, caw.”

“Luna, Luna, Luna.”

The ridge became steeper. The girl had to grab on to the spindly trunks and branches clinging to the slope to keep from falling backward. Her face was red and her breath came in gasps.

“Caw,” the crow said. “I am going up ahead to see what you cannot.”

He darted forward, through the shadows, onto the bare knoll at the top of the ridge, where large boulders stood like sentinels, guarding the mountains.

He saw a man. The man held a swallow. The swallow kicked and fluttered and pecked.

“Hush now, my friend!” The man spoke in soothing tones as he wrapped the swallow in a measure of cloth and bound it inside his coat.

The man crept toward one of the last boulders near the edge of the ridge.

“So,” he said to the swallow, who struggled and fussed. “She has taken the form of a girl. Even a tiger can take the skin of a lamb. It doesn’t change the fact that it is a tiger.”

And then the man took out a knife.

“Caw!” the crow screamed. “Luna!”

“Caw!”

“Run!”